


let me forever change the shape i'm in

by checkpoints



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:20:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24596650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/checkpoints/pseuds/checkpoints
Summary: Penetrating Eve with a bullet was nowhere near as fun.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 39
Kudos: 372





	let me forever change the shape i'm in

There was something about Eve.

There had always been something about Eve, really. Something so very, _I would throw away my career, my safety, my life for you,_ about her. The way she carried herself, the way she looked, the way she talked, the way she thought, the way she _was_ ; some invisible, intangible _something._

It was infuriating. It was intoxicating.

To be around her was to forget confidence, to forget surety, to feel the world begin to tip on its axes, as if the proximity of two people was all it took to disturb the balance of the stars themselves. Villanelle could act her way through bravado enough to throw her off balance, but it wasn’t the same.

There was just something about Eve.

Villanelle had never been religious. Not truly. Not really. She knew the imagery, of course. The history, the words, the morals of it all. She’d pretended her way through identities often enough to know, even if she had never truly _known._

But. There was something about Eve.

The sort of something that Villanelle assumed might lead one to worship. The sort of something that at times held her trapped within her own body, retreating into her own mind, suddenly overwhelmed with need to second guess every look, and every word, and every touch as if Eve were made of nothing but glass.

Fragile, fragile, fragile.

There were times, she knew, when the comparison didn’t quite hold, because how many women in worship spent their every encounter wielding empty threats of murder like foreplay? How many spent their nights wandering through touch, wondering exactly how their goddess might sound, might feel, might taste with their grip tangled up in expensive bedsheets? How many played along? How many _enjoyed_ it?

_(I think my monster encourages your monster.)_

_(I think I wanted it to.)_

No, Eve was stronger than glass, and the worship Villanelle felt drawn to in her presence was something else. Something more.

Except. Sometimes, even through that fog of anxiety that never seemed to leave her eyes, Eve made her feel whole, and welcome, and loved with nothing more than a glance. Sometimes, Eve did nothing but exist, and the opportunity to bear witness felt like blindly begging for deliverance, the lines between _else_ and _more_ already blurring themselves back together.

Sometimes, Eve touched her, allowed herself to be touched in turn, and the dull hum of worry that she was simply one more thing to know without knowing wormed its way to the surface. Would she turn away? Would she break? Would she shatter into millions and millions of beautiful little pieces?

 _(I’ve killed so many people, Eve,_ like an apology; salvation in the shape of two echoing words, _I know, I know, I know)_

She wouldn’t, of course. Because Villanelle _did_ know her. Because Eve was stronger than glass. Stronger than a bullet, or a knife, or poison, or Nadia, or Anna, or even the darkness. She was stronger than anything.

But, sometimes…

Well. Things worshipped had always seemed, to her, so easily broken.

“You stopped,” came a voice, then. Sudden and rough where others would have been soft. A question in the shape of a statement. Broken and unbreakable like a light in the dark.

Villanelle adjusted her eyes to the room. To the dark of the candlelight, and to Eve. She was lying on her back, dark curls spread out around her and spilling over the silk pillowcases in some sort of twisted black halo, iridescent and beautiful. The forever of night given form. Eve’s turtleneck sweater was pulled up and pooling loosely against Villanelle’s wrists, revealing just the barest hint of a black lacy bra, and she was staring up into her eyes, gaze cutting and soft, intense, and strong, and beautiful, and terrified, and weak. A glare that could cut steel and the most anxiously quirked eyebrow on earth. Contradictions to the core, just like the rest of her.

“I did,” was all Villanelle could bring herself to say. Her throat felt raw. Worn, despite the silence, as if all her thinking — and Eve always did make her think so, so, _so_ much — wore out her voice on its own, giving her mind the space to run on ahead and thrill at the reality that she finally had Eve in front of her. Vulnerable, and waiting, and _willing_ in front of her. Being touched in ways she’d stopped believing possible ever since…

 _(You’re mine…You are; you’re_ mine! _)_

A hand, then another, squeezed gently at her hips, and she realized suddenly that she was straddling Eve at the waist. Her own red dress was bunched up to the hips, the skirt draped gently over Eve’s hands.

“You’re _nervous,_ ” Eve said in that perfect low rumble, that perfect accent, every inch of emotion clearer behind her eyes than the sun and the stars in the sky. “How are _you_ nervous?”

“I’m not nervous,” Villanelle answered simply. The candlelight flickered and stole Eve away for the briefest of moments.

“You _say_ that, sure.”

She sounded bare seconds from laughing. Villanelle hoped she would. Hoped she wouldn’t. The sound would ruin her. The sight already had.

“I’m not nervous,” she breathed again, voice full of nerves. She leaned down and closer, pinning Eve to the mattress by the wrists. Because she wasn’t nervous. Nerves were not the same as being nervous. Nerves meant adrenaline, anticipation, pressing yourself up against the exact moment something happened and letting yourself fall through. She was not nervous.

But Eve watched her like she thought she _was_ , and suddenly Villanelle’s lungs felt emptied of even the slightest traces of air. Suddenly, those nerves felt slightly closer to nervousness. Even if they weren’t. Because she wasn’t.

“How are you nervous?” Eve asked, smiling just faintly enough that her eyes crinkled up at the corners.

Eve wasn’t nervous at all. And if Eve wasn’t nervous, then neither was she.

Villanelle cleared her throat, hoping to wipe the adrenaline tint from her voice, because it was definitely _that_ , because she _wasn’t_ nervous. She was only concerned that Eve wouldn’t…That she wouldn’t… _Something._ She wasn’t quite sure. And she wasn’t nervous, either.

It didn’t work.

“I am _not_ nervous,” she said, calm and steady as she could manage. “Seriously, you know I have had sex before, right? Tons of it. With way more women than you. More often than you, too. Sometimes two or three at once. You even walked in on two of them leaving, did you already forget? I’m very good at it. If anything, this sounds like you projecting onto me, and that isn’t fair at all.”

At that, Eve fell quiet, but neither her smile or that knowing glint in her eyes faded, and that was almost worse than the silence. The candlelight flickered again as she reached up to brush hair away from Villanelle’s face, the rough pads of her fingers taking her expression along with it until nothing was left but the blank slate of an empty mind.

“The murders,” Eve said, and reality snapped harshly back into place. “Would have been stronger proof of confidence.”

It stung a little to hear, because they were past that, she thought. If not literally, then at least physically or metaphorically; at least chronologically.

But, then, no.

She didn’t really think that. Not after everything. Of course Eve wouldn’t either. There was a weight to Villanelle’s side of things that was never going to disappear as cleanly as the knife. That stabbing had been a spur of the moment, inexperienced rush of fear.

_(I’ve never done anything like this before.)_

_(It’s okay, I know what I’m doing.)_

Villanelle couldn’t quite remember who it was she told, anymore, but she still remembered saying the words, _I understand._ Because she did. Understand. Because those moments after a chase were always intense, always unstable, always all too easy to let slip between your fingers and tip a moment so far in the wrong direction that the only thing left was to wait for the crash.

Eve had that reality to hide behind.

But Rome was…Anger. Frustration. Believing the world one way because Eve _killed_ to save her life, only to be told in the most aggressive of terms that it wasn’t, and would never be, because she hadn’t killed for that reason at all.

So, it stung. But only a little. Because the way Eve reminded her: as nothing more than a joke, like it didn’t actually bother her, eased the pain enough to hide it away.

Villanelle smirked, smaller and hesitant, swallowing down what remained of that hurt and trying her hardest to sound something like romantic. “Yes. But the difference is, unlike the killing, I would very much like to continue having sex.”

“With me, I hope?” Eve asked, and there was a split second that stretched straight through to forever where Villanelle thought she might genuinely have still been stuck on those other women; might have truly believed other women were ever a part of the equation as anything more than a taunt.

It confused her, and her brows knit together, and she reeled back, and Eve was still smiling that smile that she couldn’t quite decipher, so Villanelle pushed ahead and said, “Of course. I thought that’s what we were doing,” hoping blindly that it would be enough. Her voice was small and thin, barely above a whisper, because after everything, for Eve to still not know…

Except.

Eve laughed. _Laughed._

And, oh, it was perfect. Loud, and low, like broken bells from somewhere deep in her throat until she was absolutely breathless. And even when it seemed like she might finally be done, even when there was nothing but eye contact, breathing, and smiles, the sound continued as empty strings of hiccups.

“God,” she said around gulps of air. “How are _you_ this nervous about _me?_ ”

“What.”

“Seriously, I’m almost twice your age, you know that, right?”

“I.”

“And I’ve got wrinkles everywhere, and I’m going soft in all the wrong places, and you’re —”

“Stop that.” She gripped at Eve’s wrists hard enough to make her gasp through a wince and obediently fall silent. She wasn’t nervous. _That_ was what nervous sounded like. _That_ was what it looked like.

A scowl pulled at Villanelle’s mouth at the realization that she’d been dragged back to the thought so easily. She crushed their lips together, hoping to drown it out before the entire concept could drag her down any further.

Every single inch of Eve responded, toes flexing, legs squeezing, back arching, everything, everything, everything about her alight with something far more satisfying — because Eve’s tongue was halfway down her throat, and her lips were bitten halfway bloody, and the scowling was already circled back to smiling — than _nerves._

When they pulled apart, Eve was breathless, still squirming in her grip.

“There,” Villanelle said with a short, feral smirk. “Now no one is nervous anymore.”

She didn’t realize until Eve spoke up, mischief sparkling like starlight behind her eyes, why it was the wrong thing to say. “A _ha_ , so you _were_ nervous after all.”

“I have never been nervous a day in my life,” she said around an unsteady breath. And then, at Eve’s smugly — silently — raised eyebrow, she tugged the turtleneck off and hurled it across the room in one rough motion. “Shut up.”

It was a slow fade back to silence. And there were rules for what came next.

They hadn’t been spoken aloud or discussed in any way, because that wasn’t exactly the sort of conversation Villanelle enjoyed having until the after was the present; lines and limits were always so much more fun to explore by touch and sense in the heat of the moment. But. There were rules, with Eve. Villanelle needed there to be rules, and it wasn’t because she was _scared_ that she might hurt Eve again, or that Eve might run away again, but it also wasn’t not because she worried about doing those things. Again.

Things were complicated. They were complicated. Rules were not.

Which was maybe how Villanelle’s mental checklist had ended up an nightmare of guidelines amounting to _make sure Eve doesn’t regret it. Make sure she doesn’t regret you._

She’d researched romance ahead of time to make absolutely sure things went perfectly, booked a hotel room under three separate layers of accents and aliases, and even did the whole silk sheets and candles routine. It was difficult. Romance was new. And very confusing. So, she kissed Eve again, slower, softer, before moving to press her lips to the lobe of her ear. To the column of her throat. The dip of her collarbones. The space between her breasts, just above the line of her bra. And further. And further. All the while scraping nails gently over Eve’s skin, barely ahead on the path. A guide. A hint. A tease.

Because if nothing else, Villanelle _did_ know that.

But when she brushed up against the edges of the bullet wound at Eve’s waist, Eve gasped like she had the first time Villanelle ever held a blade to her throat. Eve’s grip found her hair, tugging lightly, and more than lightly, and the entire plan, and all its rules and guidelines burst into white noise like television static. Every single muscle in Villanelle’s body crashed to a halt, too caught up in the sound of Eve’s voice.

It was unfairly beautiful compared to the way she’d gasped on their first dinner date. The one with the drowning, and the knife, and Eve pinned up against the refrigerator. Or their second dinner date, with the poison that wasn’t poison, and the other knife, and Eve pinned up against the sink.

_(Will you give me everything I want?)_

_(…Yes.)_

Villanelle barely realized her mouth was half-open in awe, fingers still brushing over the shape of the scar, until Eve cleared her throat.

“It’s sensitive,” she said, breathed, trying and failing to cover whatever invisible force caught her trapped in a trance.

“Of course it’s sensitive, it’s where you _shot_ me,” said Eve, smiling that same perfect smile. But smaller. Sleepier. Somehow more in control.

Villanelle exhaled through her still parted lips, not quite a scoff and not quite a laugh, free hand drifting to her own matching scar almost without thinking. It was one, two, three brushes along the raised edges of it before her realization caught up to the rest of her. “Mine, too,” she whispered.

Eve didn’t ask for clarification. She settled for looking. Watching. Studying. “You’re nervous,” she said, again. But it wasn’t a joke that time. And Villanelle couldn’t quite find the proper balance to keep treating it as one.

She nodded, and Eve fell back to silence. She nodded, and she licked her lips — dry, suddenly, though she wasn’t sure when that happened — and swallowed her nerves down so hard that her eyes began to burn. “I don’t want to ruin this,” she whispered. Because the only way she ever learned to have sex was impersonal and mechanical. A checklist for keeping people distracted while she satisfied a craving. And Eve was… “Isn’t that strange? I have never worried about that sort of thing before.”

And Eve…

Eve was…

_(I don’t want to do this anymore. Any of it.)_

The hand in her hair — Villanelle nearly forgot it was there and startled slightly out of her daze with the first sign of movement — slid away, dragging a path of warmth behind until it was cupping her cheek, silently offering a chance to lean into touch like Eve always, always, _always_ did for her. Even back when she was nothing but the beautiful, terrified stranger made of rabbit-fast heartbeats and anger that led Villanelle to worship.

_(I know.)_

_(I know.)_

_(I know.)_

Seeing her like that, calm and confident, and sure, like something carved from stone and still so thoroughly _her,_ eased down the concern several notches. Villanelle straightened, dialed her focus back in, and let her breath steady, her pulse slow.

The romantic thing, then, would have been to summon up courage and return to being the experienced one with the rules and the plan. And maybe in another world, one where she wasn’t quite so in love with Eve — and it _was_ love, she realized then, that mysterious something Eve pushed her to — she would have. But in their current world, in their very, very real world, she did not. She leaned into Eve’s touch, and she allowed herself the chance to feel lost; nervous, and inexperienced, and useless.

When Eve took control — the pads of her fingers calloused and dry to the point of peeling, scraping like fire over her own soft skin — guiding her down to rest on one elbow, Villanelle didn’t fight it. When Eve took the hand still tracing her scar and pulled it away to settle between her legs, Villanelle didn’t fight it. Her middle finger was wet just from touching her.

“When did _those_ come off?” she asked, barely hiding the way her hand twitched as it brushed up against Eve’s heat.

Eve very deliberately did not meet her gaze. “You’ll miss all the best parts if you spend the whole night in your head.”

She didn’t argue.

Neither did she comment when one of Eve’s legs wrapped around her back, the heel pressing her closer, silently urging her to start, to move, to touch. Villanelle had been ordered around by women before, but none of them ever commanded like Eve, that anxious, manic confidence a promise and an admission; _I trust you. I trust you with all of my vulnerability._

The reality of it rippled through her like a wave.

She ran one finger up, then down, pressing inward without pressing _in,_ and Eve quivered for her, the sensation reverberating all the way up her bones until it settled like a quake in the pit of her lungs.

“Is that…?” She asked, barely a whisper, barely sure how she meant to finish the question.

A groan broke the moment; a shuffle, and a touch, and a pull, and then Eve was kissing her with all the pent-up irritation of a drowning woman searching for air. It wasn’t quite romantic, her mouth parting, tongue swiping, teeth cutting, voice growling, moaning, shaking, pleading as Villanelle rubbed two fingers against her. Not quite. But then Eve gasped that gasp again as her fingers pushed inside, slow and steady, and slower and shallow, and it felt enough like the culmination of every other time they’d nearly crashed together, that it was very, _very_ hard to care.

About that, or the nerves.

Maybe, Villanelle thought, there had never been any real reason to feel nervous. Maybe they were just as at home in bed as they were in the chase.

It was only…Penetrating Eve with a bullet was nowhere near as fun.

So, maybe the bed was just the smallest little bit better.

“Don’t stop,” Eve whispered, oddly steady, oddly articulate for the moment.

At least, it seemed that way until Villanelle realized she’d fallen back into her head long enough for Eve to shuffle around and push herself half upright, leaning on her elbows and hovering barely inches from her face. She was frowning like she did, eyebrows quirked together in a worry that never really felt like worry, always more like a concern that they were fundamentally incapable of speaking the same language, even when they spoke the same language.

It was a beautiful frown.

Villanelle loved that frown.

But she missed the smile, so she smirked like she was hiding a secret, and bit the tip of her tongue at the way Eve rolled her eyes, and for one short moment she thrust her fingers further inside, harder and deeper before returning to her earlier pace, and _that_ brought back the smile. She pressed the heel of her palm to flesh and slowed, and sped up again. Eve clenched around her, hot and soaking wet, and her smile turned into a gasp, and that gasp turned into a moan, and it might really and truly have been the most beautiful sound on earth.

“You know,” she said, leaning close enough to tease the shell of Eve’s ear with her lips. Her fingers sped up, faster, and faster, and faster. “We could have had this, several times by now. You’re so stubborn, I don’t know why I kept trying.”

“You know exactly why you kept trying,” Eve said roughly, the final letters choked off in a gasp, but she said it smiling.

So, Villanelle kissed her.

She was out of practice, had been ever since, well…Before the wedding with what’s-her-name-with-the-good-shoes, back when Eve was dead, and Villanelle was happy and _definitely_ still remembered her very wealthy fiancée’s face, and even though it shouldn’t have mattered that the muscles in her arm were already straining, protesting against the pace she’d set and moved past, then moved past again, it did. To her. Nerves in the shape of something that weren’t quite nerves. She didn’t want it to end so quickly.

The joking helped hide it.

Not that it needed hiding, she could have drowned out the pain and kept that pace up forever if only Eve kept making noises like _that._

But. It helped.

“That time you stabbed me, especially. I am always up for a little knife play,” she went on.

And she watched Eve move, writhing in the sheets, already fallen back against the mattress, sweat beading on her forehead and those perfect curls clinging along the lines of her jaw. She watched the way her mouth hung open, the way it hadn’t fully closed ever since she started speeding up and _really_ fucking her, but, then, the whole thing crashed and burned.

“ _Shit,_ ” she said under her breath.

A pain shot through her wrist. Her fingers twitched and spasmed where they’d crooked up.

So, she slowed, still stubborn enough not to _stop,_ but definitely slowed enough to matter, because Eve was chuckling, taking the moment to catch her breath and watching more fondly that Villanelle ever thought it possible for someone to watch her. And. Maybe those nerves that weren’t nerves were nerves after all. It was getting very hard to keep track.

Eve cleared her throat. “Are you okay?”

Villanelle didn’t answer, instead shoving herself abruptly down the mattress and hauling Eve’s thighs over her shoulders.

The first stroke of her tongue was rewarded with both legs squeezing in against her. She smiled before she could help it. She even laughed, wrapping an arm around one thigh and pressing a kiss to the other before going back in, lapping up the sides of Eve’s folds and slipping her fingers inside, crooking them just so, just gently enough to make Eve choke.

From there, she sped up, returning to her former pace, faster and faster until her jaw ached and her wrist was caught in a searing hurt all over again. It helped that she couldn’t actually see Eve’s expressions anymore to be distracted by them, or to match with the moans, and gasps, and cries spilling from her lips like the heavens themselves.

Eve’s body tensed, and Villanelle pushed herself past the burn, barely aware of the way Eve’s voice broke as she hissed, “ _Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’tstop,_ ” high, and pleading, every syllable running closer and closer together.

Sweat ran down her neck, and she was sure something in her wrist was seconds from pulling itself, but then Eve’s hands were in her hair, clenching just the right side of too hard, holding her in place, and the only thing in the world that mattered anymore was making Eve come, and.

Then.

It crashed, and it burned.

Eve’s back arched, thighs crushing together, and she was pulsing, throbbing, tensing, around her fingers and moaning something silent and empty but for the rasp lined edges of it while she rode out the feeling against Villanelle’s face.

It was minutes, or maybe hours, or maybe even days before Eve’s thighs fell away enough for Villanelle to work free. Her ears rang faintly as they did, partly from the loss of pressure, and partly from the knowledge that she’d finally _done that_ after so long chasing, and being chased, and killing, and almost being killed.

It was nice.

She pressed a kiss to both of Eve’s thighs.

“Oh, god,” Eve rasped, slack and breathing hard under a faint sheen of sweat and satisfaction.

Villanelle buried her smile as softly as she could where Eve could feel but not see. “Was that okay?” she asked. “Did you enjoy that?”

Eve said nothing.

“I ask,” Villanelle drawled on, not quite lazily, not quite sleepily, too wired on the comedown to manage anything else. She pulled back and absentmindedly licked the slick from her fingers. “Because I don’t exactly have a big prickly mustache at my disposal, so it might have been a bit less than what you are used to.”

Again, Eve stayed quiet, but when Villanelle noticed the look in her eyes, she froze, completely.

It was a _very_ good look.

The touch, the wordless demand to come closer, was even better. She draped herself fully over Eve’s body, burying her face in her hair, and she would have smiled, would have fished for more ways to draw the easy peace of it out for as long as possible, only, something dry and sticky pulled at her cheeks when she tried.

“Eugh. Wait here,” she half-mumbled, rising back to her elbows.

“What? What ‘ _eugh?’_ ”

“Your gunk is pulling at my face,” she answered, hissing far more than was necessary at the way it caught on her cheek. It wasn’t really an issue. But Eve was looking at her through wide eyes like she thought it was, and she couldn’t quite help herself. “I can’t smile.”

“That’ll happen,” Eve said and laughed. “Go clean yourself up.”

Villanelle hummed slow and rose slower, climbing from the bed, straightening herself out, and crossing to the restroom. The lights momentarily blinded her. She slipped out of her dress.

She was seconds into wetting down the first hand towel in sight when she finally caught her reflection in the mirror. She looked — _felt —_ happy. Satisfied. And it wasn’t because she was smiling, because she _wasn’t_ , but there was something about the way her body no longer seemed to be under twenty tons of stress that made the air itself around her feel…Different.

When she realized, though, it all slipped away from her. It came first as an unsure exhale, only partway to being a laugh, but then she kept watching, started smiling, and it all got away from her from there.

“I am serious,” she called before the feeling could overwhelm her, touching the ice-cold towel to her cheek, unsure whether that particular thread of conversation was still hanging or had long since come and gone. “If this gives me stretch marks, I hope you are prepared to carry the blame for ruining this beautiful face for the rest of your life.”

A single rough quack of a laugh echoed in from the other room, and Villanelle finally let the smile reach her eyes.

When she was finished, she made a show of waving the towel around, leaning against the door jamb and distinctly no longer smiling beyond slightly lidded eyes and a faint lopsided upturn of her lips. It wasn’t a smile.

And so that Eve couldn’t see it and claim it _was,_ she wandered slow around the room blowing out every candle, one, by one, by one.

“What are you doing?” Eve asked as she neared the third.

“I don’t know about you, Eve, but I would prefer not to let my very romantic gesture become an act of arson while we are still in the building. After, maybe.”

Silence returned, and Villanelle continued.

One, and two, and three more candles, and the room was cloaked in night. Just as she was about to climb back onto the mattress, Eve mumbled, “Fair.”

Villanelle pressed the towel — still ice cold — to Eve’s bare stomach.

She hissed, nearly a whine. “Why _cold?_ ”

In place of an explanation, Villanelle jammed her thumb at the scar at Eve’s hip and set to cleaning up the mess she’d made. It was over in barely any time at all, but she stayed where she was, pretending it wasn’t for the excuse to keep touching.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” said Eve.

“Let it not be said that I am an uncaring lover.”

When Eve groaned and rolled her eyes then, it was a full body movement. Villanelle could feel it through the mattress.

“I don’t have to do a lot of things,” she continued, hoping it might explain the urge even though she couldn’t yet find the words. She jabbed her tongue at her bottom lip and went silent, searching. There was more to make up for than Rome. She’d only ever gotten an answer for one of her questions. “But I find myself wanting to. For you.”

_(Did I ruin your life?)_

_(Do you think I’m a monster?)_

Silence filled the space again, and Villanelle distracted herself with absentmindedly touching Eve before the quiet consumed her. She brushed the towel lightly up one thigh, letting the sides of her fingers ghost over skin. She focused on her breathing. On the warmth of Eve’s body that refused to fade.

God, but she loved her.

“How long have you been sitting on that one?” Eve asked. Villanelle could hear the smile. It wasn’t an answer. She doubted she would ever get an answer. But it was enough. Even if she _had_ ruined Eve’s life, she was also the one Eve chose.

Villanelle cracked a smirk and threw away the towel, leaning in close enough to feel Eve tremble at the contact. She dipped her voice low, and slow, and honeyed. “Nearly two years. Can you believe in all that time, not _one_ person has had the decency to set me up for it?”

Without even needing to look, Eve hit her with that look again. It was too dark to see, but she knew it was there. _The_ look. The intense one that wasn’t quite fear. The one that always seemed to see straight through her. It felt somehow _more_ in the midst of all that blissed out afterglow, like Eve could see exactly how nervous she still was, could see the faint tremble in her hands, or the careful way she held herself.

The look followed her all the way into Eve’s final moments of consciousness. It was too dark to see, but she could feel it, still, in the way Eve breathed, and moved, and didn’t. The way she lie there, drifting off to sleep without even bothering to hold up her end of their very romantic night.

When Eve’s breath was slowed and settled, Villanelle let herself speak again. “You really are new at this,” she whispered and grinned, ghosting fingers over Eve’s hairline.

Truthfully, she wasn’t sure she would have let her bother. It would have been easy enough to twist her around into a second round. A third. There was too much to make up for. Too much to let her.

Instead, she sighed and nuzzled closer.

There was something about Eve.

Something Villanelle loved.

One day, she would know what it was.


End file.
